


Family Shennanigans

by Guardian_Rex



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Danny is a star, Danny swears in stars and constellations and space stuff, Gen, I guess Walker appeared, M/M, Phantom Family AU, Revelations, Space Core Danny, Walker is mentioned repeatedly, Wes swears with cuss words, being a lil shit is genetic apparently, ghost nip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23045821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian_Rex/pseuds/Guardian_Rex
Summary: Prompt from Tumblr: I wish you would write a fic about Danny being a little shit to Vlad by revealing him to Wes.Wes comes over and nearly gets Danny's half life ended, which leads to further family revelations that leave Danny's head spinning.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Wesley Weston, Danny Fenton/Tucker Foley, Nicolai Technus & Sidney Poindexter
Comments: 29
Kudos: 244





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To the anon who promted me this: THANK YOU I needed something to get me out of my funk of editing chapters of Mundane to Monstrous Ghost. To the rest of you: hope you enjoy it!

Danny Fenton was having a weird and not particularly pleasant week. His Dad had finally encountered the Box Ghost, who took one look at him and glitched out like a bethesda character before apparently regaining his memories. Apparently the Box Ghost was Jason Fenton, older brother of Jack Fenton.  _ The Box Ghost was Danny’s Uncle. _ That was weird as fuck to discover, especially when he implied that Box Lunch would be a person he’d have to deal with soonish. He was going to have a cousin.

His already living cousin, Wes, had decided later that week to ruin Danny’s life by asking him right in front of Jazz and Mom if he still had that giant green dog thing he’d crashed a game with. Danny dragged him up to the third floor of Fentonworks, shoved him into his room, and learned very quickly that Wes had figured out that he was Phantom the moment he focused on him. “Orion, man, you can’t just imply I’m a  _ ghost _ in front of Mom or Dad!”

“Why not?” Wes stared at him like he’d grown a second head - he hadn’t, he knew the sensation - and Danny took a moment to redirect the energy surging to his eyes over his skin and outward. It blanketed the room in a wave and left what Tucker had described as the feeling of touching an old tv and feeling static on your fingers all over the place. Wes rubbed his arm and raised a brow at him.

“Wes, tell me what Jack Fenton is going to think if you tell him ‘hey that ghost kid you shoot at all the time is your kid’? Actually, no, how the fuck did you even figure it out?”

“You look like you put on your suit and then someone turned on the color inversion filter on their camera. Blue skin, white hair, black and white suit.” Wes paused and poked Danny’s cheek, looking him in the eye. “Your eyes should be orange instead of green though if that were the whole case. How’d this happen? Last time I talked to you, you n Tucker were talking about building a motorcycle that could fly.”

“The hoverbike has sorta been put on hold, I’ll admit,” Danny grumbled, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. He pulled his hands away from his face and Wes was still there, tall and stupid and overly observant. “If I tell you what happened, do you promise not to out me to my parents?”

“I-should I treat this like you’re in the closet?” Wes snorted at the idea. “Closeted dead guy. Alright, I can get that. But uh, if you’re dead, why are you still…” he wiggled his hand and then gestured at Danny’s room. “In a house with ghost hunters?”

“Well, to start with, I’m not actually dead. Not entirely, anyway.” Danny sat down on his bed and Wes followed, and after taking a moment to triple check that Vlad’s bugs weren’t in his room with another wave of energy, Danny told Wes the story of the Accident. It was a short story, but he was slow about it. He’d never really discussed it with anyone, Sam and Tucker just sort of knew better than to bring it up and Jazz probably thought he’d tell her himself in his own time. By the time he finished, Wes looked almost as uncomfortable with the situation as Danny felt.

“You know, not to sound like a cheesy 90’s cartoon character but this is why you shouldn’t give into peer pressure.” Danny snorted and laughed at that, and Wes grinned even when Danny elbowed him. “Ok, so I’m putting together that you did a bunch of dumb shit and found yourself decided to be a superhero. What the fuck was up with the dog, or the mayor getting kidnapped? Your eyes were fuckin  _ red _ when you stole a bunch of shit that one time too.”

“Ok in order of what all happened: Axiom labs euthanized their guard dogs and one of them came looking for his squeaky toy but forgot where it was and no matter how many times I shoved Cujo back into the portal-”

“ _ Cujo _ ?” Wes snorted and ruffled Danny’s hair. “Have you been reading the stuff Sam gives you, or did your emo phase just never really end? You have the emo bangs.”

“I do not!” Danny huffed, running a hand through his curly hair that, well, Wes couldn’t really ruin a mess, could he? “You’re the one with actual bangs, sasquatch hunter.”

“Acknowledging that Big Foot is real doesn’t mean I’m gonna go and  _ shoot _ it.” Wes crossed his arms and rested them on Danny’s head. “By the way, any idea when that growth spurt is due?”

“Bold words for someone with his shins within targeting range.”

“I can and will put you in a headlock astroboy.”

“I can slam dunk you through a hoop like your precious balls.” Wes said nothing to this and simply leaned more onto Danny’s head. “If I snap my neck because of you I’m suing. Anyway no matter how often I yeeted Cujo back into the Ghost Zone-”

“I beg of you to call it something cooler. Call it the afterlife even, just. Please.”

“He just kept digging his way out. So, I looked at his tag, saw that he came from Axiom, and we ended up in there, while getting shot at by the Red Huntress-”

“Valerie, right?”

“H-”

“She appeared as the Huntress  _ literally _ the same time the dog shit was happening, and I am getting increasingly worried that no one has noticed that she sounds the same in her Red Huntress suit as she does in the Nasty Burger mascot suit.” Wes dropped his arms to Danny’s shoulder, but still rested his chin in his hair, humming loudly. Danny slid into that spot between and snorted when Wes fell onto the bed.

“I can’t tell you how pissed she was that I outed her to her dad about being the Huntress so that she wouldn’t get herself killed fighting Pariah Dark. Pretty sure if you tell her or anyone else about that, she’ll shoot you.”

“I mean, it’d probably get her swarmed by so much hostility she stops shooting at you, so that’d be a plus. I’d just come back and bug you anyway.”

“You’re a jerk, but I guess you’re alright.” Danny flopped back. “The mayor thing was a ghost, this douche bag prison warden named Walker in the GZ who decided that since I broke out of his prison I owe him over a thousand years and he’d make my home a prison instead.”

Wes stared at him, clasped his hands flat against each other, and took a deep breath. “There are  _ so _ many things wrong in that sentence. Why were you in ghost prison?”

“I did ghost crimes.” Wes looked and sounded like he was in some deal of pain, and Danny couldn’t help but grin. “Dad’s anniversary present for Mom fell through the portal while I was cleaning up by shooting things into their proper place,” he covered Wes’ mouth as he opened it, “and so I flew in after it, but it was a  _ real world item _ as though the Ghost Zone is fake somehow, and that was ‘Against The Rules’ according to Walker.” Danny rolled his eyes. “I got the present out and back to Dad but I had to like, get to him at your mom’s place.”

“Did you fly all the way from Minnesota to Arkansas for a present?”

“Arcturus,  _ no _ , not with my powers.” Danny laughed, laying back on his bed. “That’d take me like, 8 hours at top speed. No, I used the Speeder.”

“Have you modified it to get into space?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you have  _ permission _ to mod it for space travel?”

“Do I have permission to be dead?”

“Touche.”

“Anyway, Walker is stronger than me, even when possessing a human, so when all eyes and cameras were on me he possessed the mayor and dragged me back inside to make it look like I was dragging him in. Whole invasion was his idea.”

“Danny?”

“And then with the robberies when my eyes were red, did you know about Circus Gothica? Cause me and some other ghosts were under the control of the ring master of the circus, Freakshow, who had this freakin crystal ball thing that could control ghosts attached to his staff. It shattered after a very long fall, thank Astrea.”

“That’s really fucked up. You’ve had a fucked up life.”

“Yeah.” Danny shrugged. “I guess I have.”

“Know what’s more fucked up about this?” Wes had a too big grin on his face and Danny narrowed his eyes. “Do you remember my mom’s last name?”

“Wal..ker... _ no. _ ” The two of them were thundering down the stairs in seconds, Danny half shouting in the livingroom. “ _ Mom _ was your dad, by chance, a law enforcement officer, or jail warden or something?”

Mom looked up at him from the staff she was tinkering with on the table - note to self, sterilize the table before dinner - and blinked at him a couple of times before smiling and nodding. “Why yes, he did. Warden James Lamont Walker ran the Spittoon prison when he was alive. To my and Alicia’s fury and grief he was murdered during a prison break.” Mom stared off in the distance, the air around her curling with a dark cold that Danny was sure only he could see. Then she softened up a bit and smiled softly at them. “Why?”

“No reason, auntie, I was just curious about something and Danny thought we should ask you.” Wes played with the hem of his shirt while maintaining eye contact and Danny wondered if he had a tell for awkwardness like that. Then he realized he was rubbing the back of his neck. “Do you have any pictures of him?”

“Oh, yes! They’re in the shed! My boxes are actually labelled.”

“Uh oh, careful, Dad might hear of organization and come to tear it up,” Danny said with a laugh, half dragging Wes out the back door. When they were out of his mom’s considerable ear shot, Danny said softly, but with feeling, “Fuck.”

“Got locked up by grandpa, huh? That’s like, the worst way to get grounded  _ ever _ .” Wes snickered and watched Danny run-walk up to the shed, hand glowing so softly you could only see it by staring directly at it as he turned the knob.

“There are odds, slim ones, that this is a whole different Walker. It might even be his first name.”

“Who the hell names their kid Walker?”

“Walter, Wayne and Wesley Weston.”

“Alright then.”

For a few minutes the two of them searched through the mess known as the Fenton Family Shed for a box with a label neither had thought to ask for. Eventually, they found one labeled  Scrapbooks and carefully eased it out of the mess of it all. “Y’knonw, Danny,” Wes said as they opened the box and started flipping through scrapbooks with just enough care not to damage them. “I’m feelin kinda good about investigating a ghost with you. Is this how it is with you n your boyfriend and best friend?” Danny almost tore a page out, turning to stare at Wes. He must’ve felt the temperature drop for a second because he looked up with a raised brow. “What?”

“Boyfriend?”

“Tucker. Tucker Foley.” Danny’s jaw dropped and Wes’ confusion morphed into a shit eating grin. “You know, Tucker spends most of his time with you Foley? The one you build shit with all the time? The nerd that you get sick in sync with? I’ve seen you lose a pencil and then he puts one behind your ear while you look for the one you lost. You made him a custom gaming computer disguised as a console.” 

Danny’s face burned red as a tomato at this point and he shoved Wes. “Shut  _ up _ I’m not dating Tucker!”

“I have to ask Jazz about this now, you’re killing me.” Wes snorted and flipped a page. He blinked down at the scrapbook and pointed at a picture. “James Walker. This look anything like him?”

Danny took the book and looked at the picture. Looked at the several pictures of the man with his daughters, wearing a black pinstriped suit in a handful of them. And he let out a long, loud groan. “I hate this week, I hate it so much.” Wes started cackling and Danny scowled. “That reminds me.” He kicked Wes in the shins and grinned. “Much better. Also, Wes, I gotta tell you. I’m not one of a kind, as far as my living status goes.”

“Oh what, there’s another schrodinger's little shit flying around out there?” Wes rubbed his ankle and hissed.

“Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but that fruitloop we call a mayor may have been elected because he possessed literally everyone that was voting.” Wes went silent, and stared at him, and Danny nodded. “Think you can pester him instead of me? He wants to kill Dad and thinks that he can get Mom if he does that.”

“Danny. My Dad works for Masters.”

“This puts you in the perfect position to mess with him, I say. Just act like you’re there to see your dad.”

“You oblivious asshole. I fuckin love you, cous.”

“Same here, skyscraper.”


	2. Ghost Nip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone got a pretty flower bouquet onto Danny, pollen in his hair and face and suit and now he's high as a cloud but with flowers to crush and toss into other ghosts' faces. Shennanigans ensue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to prettykittylinn my apparent number one tumblr fan for this prompt! Hope y'all enjoy!

Were anyone ever to ask Danny Phantom if he’d done drugs, he would ask if being prescribed ADHD meds counted as doing drugs. When they said no, he’d tell them no. If asked what he knew about ghostly herbs he’d tell them he only knew about one ghost-related nonsapient plant and it wasn’t a fun one. He now had to change those answers to ‘not willingly’ and ‘something between weed and catnip’.

At the moment, Danny was soaring through Amity’s skies faster than he’d ever gone in his life, slowing down at random intervals and giggling at just how funny everything had become. He chatted with birds and chased after squirrels to pet them, informing any passerby who stopped to say hi that they looked a lovely shade of blellow or grik or touroon. Humans did not understand these colors or their auras and Danny couldn’t explain them quite well but they were _there_ and _so pretty_.

And then he saw Technus, Nicolai Technus, self-proclaimed master of technology and Danny zoomed into his personal space. “Child! What are you-“

“ ** _Did you know, Nicolai, that the stars and planets and oceans and galaxies are as alive as you or I?_** ” Danny spoke both with his mouth and with flares and flickers of power and light and heat and cold, a language built on energy frequencies that he did not know but that he _knew_ more than any mortal tongue. “ ** _That they speak and sing with different languages? I find that interesting. I can hear them now but they’re so Much I can’t fully understand them.”_**

“Phantom what are you talking about?” Technus floated back, waving a hand in the air, frowning. That wasn’t good, he should be smiling! Today was a fun day! “Are you high? Is that Ghost Nip, ghost child?”

“ ** _DID YOU KNOW NICOLAI TECHNUS POINDEXTER that the stars sing?”_** Technus flinched and Danny wondered at that, felt and saw as the older ghost charged up a ball of plasma, sparking and arcing and dancing with electricity, to strike him with. Danny, in turn, tossed the crushed petals that he had put into his pocket at some point in the future or present in Nicolai’s face. He coughed and spluttered, aura flickering through shades of emotion that he rarely acknowledged, feelings that Nicolai had forsaken at some point if Danny remembered correctly. “ ** _You are a soul filled with the power of the Infinite Realms, Nicolai, why would you deny your feelings? Without your emotions, you cannot feel the joy of helping people, the satisfaction of making something useful, the pride that others enjoy your work and incorporate it into their lives. And regardless of whether you resent your emotions, surely you realize that this too is a feeling?”_**

“I-you- _you have a point, child._ ” He spoke in radio signals and electrical pulses now, and Danny returned them in kind with elation at the sign that his enemy was now far more cheerful than when he spoke knowledge that hadn’t yet been shared with him, but it had been shared with someone and they would tell him and so he knew for time was a funny thing that slipped and slid around in space with the tug and pulls of gravity. “ _And what would you suggest I do? The humans do not respond to Ghost Nip the way we do._ ”

“ ** _No, but they respond well to progress and positive change and they need so much power yet so few of them use the power that the day star offers, constant and steady and ringing with their song. Do you think you can help me? I can’t speak the language of the stars just yet, but technology can translate many things into a sense that we can follow, can’t it?_** ”

They chatted amicably until the Red Huntress came upon them and Technus waved at her before pixelating into so many electrical signals dancing through the sky and flew off to bring waves of upgrades to technology all over the town. And Danny waved at Valerie himself, flickers and flares of gravity and light like a star might give off deflecting the plasma she launched at him in her own hostile greeting. “ ** _Hi Valerie,_** ” he said but didn’t say, his voice reaching the speakers in her suit meant to relay calls from Vlad but instead responding to him because all the energy came from the stars, didn’t it? And the suit had taken her to space, oh, that would be fun to do again, wouldn’t it?

Danny waved Valerie goodbye and flew off, bending the starlight around his fingers and weaving images and paintings of himself all around her so that she could at least see him. Valerie didn’t like Danny, his presence angered her, made her red aura darken to something bloody and Danny didn’t _like_ that. So, he flew off to where he felt the tug of misfortune and negative chaos and luck turned upside down. He found Johnny and Kitty having a picnic in the park and lingered over some buzzing beetles in the grass, his core buzzing in response though the beetles didn’t seem to hear him. Or maybe they only understood him as much as he did the quasars in the sky? “ ** _JOhnny! Kitty! Hi hi hi, how are you? You look like you’re having fun, are you having fun?_** ”

The two gave Danny a bemused look, Johnny’s shadow rising up like ink rippling with waves of cold, icy, burning flames that stole heat instead of giving it away. He smiled at them, wider than a human face could accommodate, and they snickered and laughed. “Uh, yeah little man. Just out for some fun on a date. Are you baked, little guy?”

“ ** _Clay was once baked in the sun to make the older bricks, I basked in the sun’s light and felt it dancing over my skin before it sank into me and-_** ”

“Oh my god,” Kitty said with a high laugh that had Danny floating a bit further from the ground as he orbited them. “He’s definitely high. Lemme guess, someone showed you some Ghost Nip?”

Danny dug another petal from his pocket and crushed it in his hand, tossing a shower of the dust onto his two friends, because they were happy to see him so clearly they were friends now, weren’t they? “ ** _The prettiest flower, it smells so nice. Is that what it’s called?_** ” He stared at Johnny and hummed, and reached out beyond his body and he _saw_ and tugged on the strings and laughed. “ ** _Johnny, come with me, I’m sure she wants to see you again!_** ” Before Kitty can ask who ‘she’ is, Danny pulls Johnny with him into the sky, and Kitty follows, and Johnny snorts and laughs and whispers to him in a way that echoes in the wind where empty space lies hidden and bubbles with probability. They are at the Manson Mansion faster than Danny expected but he’s so energized at this point that he hardly knows that when he and Johnny dive into the house and Danny watches as the tug on the strings around Johnny’s soul pull him along and guide him faster than Danny or Kitty. And they arrive and they see Ida, bowling in her alley, and Danny cheers for her and his voice bounces off the walls, comes through the many speakers and flickers across screens. “ ** _Hi, miss Manson! I brought Johnny!_** ”

“... Johnny?” Ida turned and her aura flickered wildly, it was a rainbow, a kaleidoscope, but Danny saw the gamule in it and bounced in the air. Happy tears shined in her eyes and Johnny slowly, carefully descended to the ground and wrapped his arms around her.

“ **Mom?** ”

Danny left with a proud nod, satisfied that he had helped, and flew off to find others to help, there was always someone to help, wasn’t there?

* * *

Dash Baxter was afraid of very few things, but the hostile nerd ghost levitating a bunch of pencils pointed at him and his fellow jocks like arrows was certainly a contender. He and the boys were at practice and one of the AV club geeks had passed by while they were wrapping up so Dash decided to have a little fun with the freak. He didn’t expect Poindexter to fuckin pop out of the ground and summon all the pencils and pens from inside the school to him and start ranting about bullies. The guy screamed nerd from every facet of his appearance except for the glowing red eyes and Dash wanted to say something witty but all that really came out was, “fuck off you bucktoothed weirdo! We’re just havin some fun.”

Dash’s late grandfather always did call him an idiot and Dale smacking him upside the head with a hiss of the same confirmed this. After all, Phantom was nowhere in sight and saying that just made the ghost go red and flickery with rage. _This is how I die. A fuckin nerd is gonna kill me._

Pencils flew at the team and Dash braced for the impact that never came as green, silver, gold and blue light wrapped around them in a dome and stopped the pencils like they were nerf darts. Danny Phantom floated down between them and the ghost and Dash relaxed. Though, Phantom looked… off. His hair was more like mist now, and his suit looked less like the goofy hazmat that the Fenton Freaks wore and more like an astronaut’s spacesuit. He looked sorta like he was on fire, and sorta like he was surrounded by icy mist or both. “ ** _Sidney! Did you know that Nicolai is here?_** ” _Who the fuck is Nicholai?_

Poindexter clearly knew, though, and was shocked out of his supernatural rampage. He stared at Phantom with wide eyes. “I- no I didn’t. Nicolai is alive? Wait, Phantom, what the heck is up with your… everything?”

Phantom pulled out what looked like a flower petal with fifty different colors swirling around it, which didn’t make sense since there were only so many colors, but ghosts never made any sense. He crushed it into powder between his hands while talking. “ ** _I found this neat pretty flower somewhere in the Infinite Realms, though I don’t remember where I found it, but I do know that it smells so so happy! HEre, smell it!”_** and then Phantom tossed dust at the guy, and dropped his shield around the team.

“Dude… Phantom’s fuckin high,” Chris whispered, and Dash’s eyes widened.

“Holy shit, ghosts can get high?”

“ ** _And no, sadly Nicolai isn’t the same alive as those guys behind me, but he’s the kind of alive that you and I are! We’re technically alive, though Dad doesn’t agree, but he hasn’t met his uncles yet and I’m sure if he knew how much family was still alive on our side of the P_** ** _̡̡_** ** _o_** ** _͢_** ** _r_** ** _̨_** ** _t_** ** _͞_** ** _a_** ** _̴̛_** ** _l_** ** _̨͡_** ** _,_** ” Dash had no idea what the fuck Phantom just said but apparently he was related to some ghost? Kwan had his phone out now and was recording the conversation. “ ** _Sidney Poindexter, Nicolai Poindexter, you’re both really smart, but Nicolai calls himself Technus now but he’s helping people today!_** ”

Poindexter opened his mouth, and Dash’s head hurt. He wasn’t making a sound that Dash could figure out but there was a pressure in his skull until that silver light that Phantom’s shield had earlier wrapped around him and the rest of them. Some of the guys ran off, not wanting to be in the line of fire when the fight started, but if Phantom just tossed ghost weed onto the nerd then maybe he’d be too chill to try and kill them.

“ ** _Exactly! You told me years from now about your little sister that you miss and grandma’s still the alive you were hoping for, with Nicolai, promise! You’re technically my great uncle then, aren’t you?_** ”

“Holy shit, Phantom’s related to _Poindexter?_ ” Both ghosts’ attention snapped toward him in a tangible way and Dash wished he’d kept his big mouth shut. Phantom’s eyes were torches that obscured the rest of his face, and that fire that flickered around him whipped out all over the place now. People weren’t usually violent when they were high, were they?

“ ** _Dashiel Baxter,_** ” he said in the iciest tone Dash had ever heard from anyone. “ ** _You’re a bad fan. You’re clearly not paying attention to me when I told and help people and save people._** ” The accusation stung, one of those firey whips across his face, and how did he know that an invisible one made of emotion hadn’t hit him? Ghosts were made of feelings and shit, weren’t they? “ ** _Why do you hurt people? You know that’s not nice or cool or heroic of you, don’t you? No one really likes a bully. I sure don’t. I was bullied a lot as a kid. It’s not fun for the kid being bullied. I can’t understand why it’s fun for the bully._** ”

“I-” Dash was going to defend himself. He wasn’t really hurting anyone, he was just messing around! The nerds were fine. They were alive, weren’t they? But cold and heat and anger rooted into his veins and held his tongue and he shivered under the angry glare of his hero.

“ ** _You should stop bullying people. It’s illegal, the things you do. Someone will do something bout it eventually. If not Sidney then someone still living the way you do. They might do something about it legally._** ” Phantom turned back to Poindexter and then to Dash, and he felt heavy as a mountain under that stare. “ ** _For your sake, I hope it’s done legally._** ”

And then his eyes snapped off of Dash onto Dale’s hand, where a green lantern ring sat and his eyes were still green flashlights that made it impossible to see the rest of face even inn the daylight, but those tendrils of ghost fire retreated into him and the air wasn’t frozen over anymore. Dash could move, technically. Phantom turned back to Poindexter, who was speaking without speaking again, and Dash decided to book it himself before things got worse.

* * *

Danny pulled Sydney along their strings to find Nicolai sweeping over a hospital and protective ire bubbled in his core, but a quick count told Danny that no one was becoming a ghost in there quite yet so he calmed himself. “ _Ghost child! The generators to the hospital now have a backup that draws on sunlight! I… Sydney?_ ” Nicolai pulled his glasses up and stared, and Sydney stared and Danny grinned and bounced in the air and with inspiration from the Green Lantern, who was one of his favorite heroes but how could he not be he went to _space_ and talked with aliens, and made a bright green lasso that he pulled Nicolai in closer to Sydney with. They hugged. There were tears and lots of babbling and cheer in the air that lit up the sky.

Then a net was on him and _pain_. Danny convulsed in the air, screaming, and unlike his usual Wail his power carried through the sound in every direction and shook the ground. A hand yanked the net off of him and Danny wrapped Nicolai in a hug, before turning his head around to spot Skulker glaring at them all. “Technus what the hell are you doing? The boy is intoxicated and vulnerable! I _had_ him!”

“ _You’ll have no one and nothing if you don’t back the hell off of my great-nephew you diminutive little frog!_ ” Technus was angry, and sparks danced at his fingertips, ready to snap out and strike. But Skulker also hummed with electricity and his suit exposed missiles that Dany couldn’t let him fire so close to the hospital. No no no.

“Oh great,” Skulker grumbled. “He’s gotten you high as well, has he? What’s this talk of nephews, Technus, you told me you didn’t have any family.”

Technus held his hand out but Danny made swords and scythes and chains from the dancing sunlight and cut off Skulker’s rocket launchers, and his arm before binding him. “ ** _He lied. You’re a danger to the people here. You’re cruel and a really shitty hunter and I wanted today to be a nice happy day, Skulker, so how bout you get the fuck out of my town?_** ” Paint was light, the brush was ectoplasm, and Danny drew for them a fox with three tails and six paws and flames licking its jaws that lunged at Skulker. “ ** _Did you know that a group of foxes is called a Skulk? Sam told me that. Sam and Tucker are good friends. Tucker is the best friend. I’m gonna go find him now. By uncle Sydney, uncle Nicolai!”_**

Danny couldn’t leave Skulker out like that though so he cast away his fox and pulled out his thermos and sucked in Skulker and his suit and then he was flying, and riding the fox and stroking its soft pretty fur.

* * *

“I didn’t know he could purr,” Sam said, as though that were the important thing here. She took a picture with her old camera and Tucker glared. “Think any other ghosts purr when they’re high?”

“Can we discuss that after we get me untangled?” Tucker tried to pry Danny’s arms and tail off of him, but to no avail. Any amount of force he applied Danny could match, and if he pulled too hard, Danny just phased through his fingers and clung tighter. “Why are yougods Stop that!” Danny was now rubbing their cheeks together and looking at him wide eyes that were green where they should’ve been white and every color that did and didn’t exist on the visible spectrum filling the place of pupils and irises. Looking at these particular puppy eyes was like gazing into a black hole and the Milky Way at once. Sam was laughing at him. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s hilarious. And kinda cute. After all, it’s not every day you see two love birds cuddling in bed like a snake-cat hybrid.”

“We’re not _lovebirds_ Sam, we’d kinda need to be infatuated with each other at minimum.” Tucker sighed, resigned to his fate, and patted Danny’s cloudy hair. He purred three times louder and warmth seeped into him from every point of contact. “What’s the flower?”

“According to the latest Viewtube video Kwan posted of Danny roasting Dash? Some variant of weed.” Sam looked Danny up and down and snorted. “He’s covered in dust so he’ll probably be like that for a while.”

Sam needn’t know how ok with that Tucker was feeling. He could see in her smirk that she knew anyway but he could deny it! Though, with all this cuddling, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Sam petted the fox curled around her and Tucker rolled his eyes at her cooing. “I see the Naruto phase never wore off.”

“Shut it furry.”

“Why should I, weeb?”

“It’d be awful if that oh so precious bow of yours lost its string, now wouldn’t it?” Tucker huffed and sank into Danny’s embrace with a grumble. “That’s what I thought.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the names for the colors Danny can see in the humanly non visible spectrum are inspired by The Transcendence AU of Gravity Falls. Thoughts and feelings about this? leave those and any extra prompts you have in the comments below! or in my inbox on tumblr!


	3. Ordering Family Bonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny has no clue how to really feel about having gotten high, or about Poinndexter and Technus being his great uncles. So, instead, he goes to the Infinite Realms and rubs both his comprehension of the way the Realms work and his family ties to Walker in the warden's face.

Coming down from his high was somewhat embarrassing, considering he did so still wrapped around Tucker and muttering in some weird ghost language that humans couldn’t hear. Finding out that he’d told Dash off on camera, and that it had been posted to Viewtube was less embarrassing - though he wasn’t sure how happy he was with the public knowing he’d gotten high since he clearly hadn’t informed anyone that it was accidental. Intoxication gave him divination powers, apparently, because Sidney Poindexter was very soon finding Danny in his own backyard and thanking him for reuniting him with his brother, and also remarking that he was apparently their great-nephew. Danny didn’t realize he’d patted Sidney on the back and waved him off until he was gone. Heading inside, Danny found his father in the cursed items vault - which he really needed to probably clear out before something activated - and cleared his throat. Dad looked up from where he was studying a creepy-looking doll that Danny could see a dull ectoplasmic glow inside of if he tilted his head just so to the left. “Dad, are we related to the Poindexter family by any chance?”

“Absolutely are, Danno!” Dad set the doll down and clapped a hand over Danny’s shoulder. “Your grandmother and her brothers Nicolai and Sidney lived here. The place had some bad memories after Sidney’s … violent death.” If it was bad enough that Jack Fenton himself tried to figure out how best to phrase it, Danny didn’t wanna know. It wasn’t his place to go asking around about another ghost’s cause of death anyway. “Mom and uncle Nicolai moved out as soon as they could. Uncle Nic was pretty good with technology - even inspired me to start inventing! He had an accident though.” Dad looked oddly melancholy for a moment and gave Danny’s shoulder a squeeze. “Why do you ask?”

“Do you have pictures of either of them?” This was important and Danny couldn’t approach this too recklessly.

The orange giant shrugged. “Probably in the shed. I’ll look for em and we can reminisce about them together!” Dad patted Danny’s back a couple of times and Danny gave him a thumbs up, heading back up the stairs as soon as he could.

“Thanks, Dad!” When he got to his room, Danny huffed and leaned against the door. “Talking with Dad about ghosts, family, and morality will have to wait till he actually gets to the scrapbooks or something. That’s fine. What to do about this weirdness until then?” For a long few moments, Danny paced in the air of his room, doing his best to exercise his powers while in human form in case he ever needed to use them like that. And then it hit him, the realization that he could rub his relationships to the ghosts in their faces. Or at least one of them in particular.

Dropping down to his desk, Danny grabbed a notebook, found a pencil, and got to writing.

* * *

The Infinite Realms was an expansive void of metaphysical energy and pandimensional pseudo-matter that went on in every direction, including ones that human minds were incapable of perceiving and the recently deceased struggled to make sense of due to the human brain template their soul initially worked with. It had, however, rather solid topography as far as Danny could tell. His own map of the place - the 2-dimensional one that only accounted for horizontal movement - was rather reliable after all this time exploring it when he felt it was safe to do so. So, it took about no time at all to find Walker’s prison and slip in. Considering that Walker himself was also among the relatively recently dead who didn’t do well with thinking beyond 3 dimensions, Danny found his moments of temporary slip and sliding along consciousness and through the countless dimensions available to him for movement the perfect method of sneaking past all the guards into said prison. The walls were constructed simply, and all Danny really had to do was move along one of Earth’s dimensional axis more than the rest.

When he found Walker’s office and the warden himself absent, Danny took a seat in the man’s chair and slid into this lair’s particular scope of reality. It didn’t take long for Walker to return, by which time Danny had found that replicating the thing he’d apparently done where he made constructs out of ectoplasm besides shields was endlessly easier done in the Infinite Realms than it was on Earth. Probably the ectoplasm everywhere. “Boy what in tarnation are you doing in my office and in my chair?”

“Sitting, waiting, lounging, doing art.” Danny dismissed the tesseract he’d made, hoping it didn’t draw Boxy’s attention. He drew his arms up onto the desk and grinned at the skeletal warden, letting the accent his Mom sometimes let slip through come out full force. “Ya see, James Lamont, I came across a rather interesting thought.”

Walker crossed the room in less than a second, Danny ducking out of the way of his fist by half a hair. He flew up to the ceiling and chuckled. “How the hell did you learn that name, delinquent?”

“Oh my ma, Madeline Paige Walker Fenton, told me about you.” The warden froze, gawking at him, and Danny pulled out a journal of his. “Anyways, I had a thought. You get on me about violating rules of yours that probably don’t even genuinely apply because between Clockwork and the Observants and Dora, I struggle to believe that you have any real authority beyond your prison and the ghosts that you can manage to arrest on nonsense violations of rules constantly changing on your merest whim. Yet, you come into my town and fail to acknowledge my rules or the rules of the town known as _laws_.” Walker was glaring again now, eyes burning bright. Danny clucked his tongue. “Quite a misstep for a lawman such as yourself, gramps.”

“There aren’t any laws that I broke, _Daniel_ , and I promise you I have plenty enough authority. That comes from power, boy, in this world and the living one.”

“Power grated by all the people that give it to you. On both sides.” Danny rolled his eyes. “And overshadowing a bunch of people while invading the town to capture one of its citizens is definitely illegal. Regardless, unlike _you_ I’m not gonna be too harsh about someone violating rules they didn’t know were there.” Danny tossed the book at Walker’s face, only pouting a little bit when he caught it. “Violation of those rules will result in being stuck in the thermos for increments of time that increase with every offense. Huh. Take that Lancer, I’ve got a wide vocabulary.”

“You still owe me 2,000 years in this prison, _Daniel_ , and I-”

“Never call me that, you haven’t earned it family or not,” Danny said with a cheerful grin and brilliant blue glow at his fingertips. “Also, Aunt Alicia and Mom miss you. They didn’t say as much but I could tell. I’m good with emotions. Bye, Grandpa!” Danny flashed some finger guns and slid entirely out of sync with Walker’s prison. He could still hear the screams of rage, but he was already on his way to go visit Frostbite by the time he was any semblance of tangible to Walker. “Being friends with a scientist ghost has the best perks.”


	4. Healing Star Vibes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny learns a few things about himself in the middle of English class

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is filling in a prompt from the wonderful PrettyKittyLinn, thank you kitty!

Danny had, from the beginning, thought that his ability to repair himself from damage was probably his second favorite power right after flying. It was beyond helpful after a fight with Skulker or Valerie or some competent ghost that was out to get him. One thing he’d always wished – silently, in his head where Desiree couldn’t hear him – was that he could extend that to Sam and Tucker. They did so much to help him in his fights and they had to get real good with concealer real fast when things got serious in their fights. He had hoped, of course, that the ability to extend that neat healing power to others would come to him at any time, though he’d expected it in the middle of a crisis situation, such as all his other powers.

In the middle of English class, the sun warming his face while he leaned on his hand, tilted toward Mikey instead of Tucker for once since Mikey was closer to the window, Danny found himself thinking about space more than about the hidden meaning in whatever literary text Lancer had cooked up for them to go over today. He thought, of course, about the stars and life and how the two were affected by each other. This had almost nothing to do with him getting high off of ghost nip that one time, no siree, just your standard contemplation about how every living thing came from the stars, and how all the people and beings on Earth were just the ghosts of a long-dead star. His hand had found his pencil and doodles of the night sky were being sketched very much so without Danny’s conscious input but that was just how it was sometimes.

Eyes drifting as much as his mind, Danny noticed for a moment that Mikey had a few bruises on him, likely from Dash being an asshole. Feeling sympathetic, Danny reached out and patted the ginger on the shoulder, offering him a smile. What the ghost boy did _not_ expect was to find his ghostly energy surging to his fingertips and into Mikey, filling him with the cool warmth of the space just around a star, silver, gold and green light rippling like flames just beneath the nerd’s skin as his purple and yellow bruises fixed themselves up and healed over to a healthy pink. Danny noticed only the flaring up of his powers, though, not what they had done, and his attention snapped up to the board and around the room, searching for anything that might’ve set them off. Finding nothing, Danny shrugged and leaning back in his chair, trying to focus on Lancer’s dry as toast lecture.

Unlike Danny, Mikey was not so oblivious as to fail to notice the energy surging through his body like a friendly live wire, healing up his injuries. He was a somewhat intelligent boy, he liked to think, and it didn’t take much to put together that Danny had been the source of his newfound lack of pain. Now, to an outside observer not from Amity Park, this would be cause for alarm or shock or something like that. Mikey, however, has been a resident of Amity Park his entire life. When Danny Fenton was in his 6th-grade algebra class and Dash had been calling Tucker names, Danny’s eyes flared up a toxic neon green that they all now knew was the color of ectoplasm. Jasmine Fenton, when not paying attention to what she was doing, caused books to move toward her – either dragged toward her on what appeared to be an invisible string or simply appearing where she needed it. Mikey has seen Danny walk through a vending machine while talking and not notice. This was weird, yes, but it was nothing new at all.

So, instead of freaking out, Mikey reached into his bag, pulled out a blueberry lollipop and slipped it to Danny, who accepted it without looking or really noticing. Once the pop was in his mouth, wrapping vanished in pockets that some were certain had no actual limit to their depth, the nerd turned his attention back to class. Unlike Danny, he actually found Lancer at least mildly interesting.

And then he heard the soft rumbling purrs of a cat coming from none other than Danny Fenton himself. 

Everyone paused for just a moment, the students behind him and on the sides turning their attention blatantly toward the purring teen while Lancer cocked his head to the side and listened. Tucker’s phone was out and recording immediately, as were several others, and Mikey heard at least one person coo about how adorable that was. Danny didn’t seem to notice, and before he _could_ notice and probably stop purring, everyone went back to normal class things. It wouldn’t do to let him know so soon when it was far more entertaining to see how long it took to notice on his own.

Turns out, it wasn’t until the end of class when Danny leaned on Tucker’s shoulder on the way out and saw the silver light just beneath the geek’s skin that he stopped purring. The absence of the vibration did more to tell him about it than it’s arrival. “Guys, was I _vibrating_ just now?”

“You were purring like a kitten,” Sam whispered with a wide smirk. “It was honestly kinda cute. Also, is Tucker glowing or do I need to get my eyes checked?”

“Oh no, I’m feeling tingly. But it’s like, a good tingly? Like, scrapes from the last few fights are feeling less sore all of a sudden?”

“Huh.” Danny pulled up Tucker’s arm and gave it a pinch.

“Nope, nothing but your fucking pinch,” Tucker said, elbowing Danny in his ribs. “Thanks, by the way.”

“I expected to get something like this during a fight, not gonna lie. Wait, shit, what if people-“

“Everyone just sorta waited for you to notice you were purring, Danny.” Sam ruffled his hair and he bat at her hands. “No one thinks you’re a ghost, they think you’re mutated by your parents’ experiments and shit.”

“That’s not inaccurate,” Danny muttered. “How long have people thought that?”

“In those exact words? About 8th grade. In general though? About 4th grade.”

“ _What_?!”

“Danny, your eyes have glowed since that one time in the park when Kwan and Dash were being little shits to us.”

Danny took a deep breath and buried his face in Tucker’s sweater, screaming for a moment, and then leaned on his best friend. “Why is this my life?”

“The better question is why you think the perfect cover story is a bad thing?” Sam arched a brow. “This is literally the best way to make sure no one figures you out.”

“It kinda paints my parents in the worst light ever, though,” Danny mumbled.

“It’s an accurate light, you’ve been glowing, seeing things that other people can’t, and sometimes making people feel lighter than they should since forever bro.” Wonderful. Danny needed time to figure that out.

“Think Frostbite can help me figure out this healing thing?” That was a good distraction. His powers always kept him from thinking too hard about things – that and ghost fights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts, feelings, comments? maybe even more prompts?

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, yell prompts into my inbox at Guardianrex on tumblr and also tell me down below!


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